“Oh yes,” Madeleine replied cheerfully. “She said it reminded her of home. Coffee, Dad?”
“Just a quick one,” he said, “and then we must get on with this girl’s room. I’ve got to be back for a meeting by half-four.”
They had cleaned Hattie’s room, washing down the paintwork, shampooing the carpet and cleaning the window and then Nick touched up the paint where the desk had scraped the wall. By the time they’d finished it looked clean and welcoming.
“When’s Hattie arrive?” Dean asked as he joined them for a quick cup of tea before Nick left.
“Not sure, tomorrow or the next day,” Mad replied. “Charlie comes tomorrow, I think, and Cirelle comes on Wednesday.”
“Then you’ll be a full house again,” Nick said setting down his cup and getting to his feet. “Well, I hope she fits in all right, this Hattie. I must be off now, Maddo. I’ve an appointment with Freddie Jones in half an hour. Give us a ring soon.” He planted a kiss on his daughter’s cheek and went down to his car.
“Give my love to Mum,” Mad said as he wound down the window. “See you soon, Dad.” Spike wound himself round her legs and Madeleine picked him up. “Oh Spike,” she murmured into his fur, “so much has happened. Everything seems to be changing, and I’m not at all sure about Hattie. I wish Ben was still living here.”
On the evening of Madge Peters’ funeral, Dean and Mad had gone to the Dutch for a drink. Ben was behind the bar. He looked tired and drawn, but he greeted them cheerfully enough.
“Hi,” he said, taking two glasses from the shelf. “The usual?”
They perched themselves on bar stools and waited for their drinks.
“So, how’s the world of Dartmouth Circle?” Ben asked.
“It was Madge Peters’ funeral today, “ Mad said. “Cirelle and I went. Lots of people from the Circle were there. Like, I still can’t believe she’s died, you know?” Then she thought of Annabel, “And poor Annabel Haven’s been attacked, this afternoon, on the allotment path, you know just behind the cut? Mike Callow came and got her mother from the funeral. He took her to the hospital, and I had to go and tell that tarty little sister of hers.”
Ben raised an eyebrow. “Can’t have been easy,” he remarked.
Mad took a pull at her beer. “No it wasn’t. When I got there, I didn’t care if she was upset. I hoped she’d be miserable, but when she was, I ended up feeling sorry for her! Can you believe that?”
Ben smiled. “Yes, knowing you, I can,” he said. “But who attacked Annabel? Does anyone know?”
“Not yet,” Dean said. “Charlie went to the hospital in the ambulance with her, but she hasn’t come home again yet.”
“Charlie did?” Ben was amazed. “Was she there when it happened or what?”
“No, she and Mike Callow were just getting out of the car… you know Mike took Charlie to Ireland when her sister was taken so ill… that was very odd too, don’t you think? Like, I mean, I know she babysits for him, but even so.”
“Mad, get on with the story,” implored Ben.
“What? Oh, well yes… well they were just getting home when Annabel appeared at the end of the cut, crying, and covered in blood and bruises. They called an ambulance and Charlie went in it with her, and Mike came to find Mrs Haven.”
“So, have you heard how she is?”
“No, not yet. Her dad came home and took Chantal to the hospital with him. I expect we’ll hear more when Charlie gets back.”
“Any other news?” Ben didn’t ask directly about Jill Hammond, but they all knew what he was really asking.
“She’s been away all week, I think,” Mad said as if the question had been asked. “But she was at the funeral today.”
“Does she know I’ve moved out?”
“I don’t know,” Mad said. “I didn’t talk to her. She may do. Some helpful soul like Sheila Colby is sure to have told her.”
“She’s a cow,” Dean said conversationally, and downed the last of his beer. “Fill them up, Ben.”
Ben had pulled two more pints, before disappearing to the other end of the bar to serve other customers.
“It’s funny without him,” Mad sighed. “I had hoped he might change his mind and come back if I asked him. Do you think he will?”
Dean shrugged. “Don’t know,” he said. “Doubt it, somehow.”
“In which case,” said Mad, “I have to find someone else to take his place, because I need the rent. I suppose you don’t know of anyone needing a place?”
“No,” Dean shook his head, “But I’ll ask around.”
None of their friends came into the Dutch that night, and Mad found she was quite pleased. It was very relaxing sitting with Dean and just chatting. She had to make no effort with Dean, they were completely easy together. With Dan she’d always felt the need to be witty, and bright and clever, to hold his attention on herself in the face of the opposition always present in any bar.
When they left the pub at closing time, Ben had watched them go. He was sorry he couldn’t go home with them as he used to, his room at the Dutch was poky and small, and he missed the buzz of the Madhouse, but he knew it would be stupid. Jill Hammond had got to him in a way no other woman ever had, and until it was all over he hadn’t even realised it. Now he found he missed her with an almost unbearable ache. He hadn’t realised how much he’d looked forward to seeing her, even if it was only when he was doing the odd jobs she’d found for him. Just being near her had become important to him in a way that he would never have believed possible, and memories of the times they had been together making love, gave him physical anguish. If, at the time of the affair he’d been told that he would have anything more than passing regrets when it finished, he would have laughed. A short fling with an older woman that was all, very flattering to the ego and a good lay into the bargain, but nothing lasting.
When she had walked away from him at the party, he had known that that was it, that they wouldn’t meet again. Anthony seeing them together would bring an end, a very abrupt end, to the affair. It was the next morning and over the successive days he discovered what he’d lost and the pain of that loss began to grow. He had thought of trying to contact her, of phoning during the day when Anthony would be at work. He’d even got as far as dialling the number, but had put down the receiver before anyone had a chance to answer. He knew it was over, and there was no point in tormenting either of them, and there was certainly no point in going back to live in Dartmouth Circle where they might bump into each other at any time.
Ben sighed and started washing the glasses, so that he could go up to his room. At least he’d be finished here in the summer and then, he decided, he was off round the world.
When Mad and Dean got home, Mad found she had forgotten for a short while, the misery of Dan and Chantal, and the horror of the attack on Annabel. Not for long however, as Charlie was now back and able to tell them how Annabel was getting on.
“She’s lost the baby,” she said. “She was already bleeding when Mike and I found her. God, I’d like to get my hands on the bastard that did this to her!” And they all felt the same.
Over the last few days of term Madeleine had looked round for someone else to take Ben’s room in the house. When she had suggested he might come back, he was quite adamant that he wouldn’t.
“Sorry Mad, but no way. I’m fine here, and I still see you guys in the bar.”
Then Cirelle came up with Hattie. She was in her final year of a B Ed, a large, cheerful girl, with short bouncy dark curls and huge brown eyes. She seemed to fill any room that she came into with her laughter and non-stop chatter. Mad liked her well enough, but wasn’t sure how easy she would be to live with. Still she needed the rent, and she had to have someone, and at least Hattie would be down on the ground floor. “Hey, this is really great,” she boomed when she came round to the house to have a look. “I love the room and the house, and I just love its name. The Madhouse, is that cool or what?” And she roared with laughter. Mad to
ld her the rent and the ground rules, though when they went into the kitchen it was Dean’s day for washing up, and they clearly hadn’t been adhered to.
“Sorry, it’s not usually this untidy,” Mad apologised.
Like hell it isn’t, thought Charlie who was sitting in the living room and had overheard the comment, and she groaned inwardly as she heard Hattie reply, “Don’t worry about it, Mad. I don’t mind. Feels like home.”
Hattie was introduced to everyone and then asked, “Can I leave my stuff here for the Christmas holidays? I don’t really want to have to pack it all up and take it home and then cart it all back again.”
“Well, I suppose so,” said Mad doubtfully. “I was going to give your room a spring clean over the holiday before you moved in next term.”
“Hey that’d be great,” Hattie agreed. “Like, I can just leave my stuff in the cupboard, OK?”
“She’s a bit noisy,” Dean complained, speaking loudly to make himself heard over the thudding of UB 40, “Still I suppose we’ll get used to her, and it’s only for two terms.”
Charlie laughed. “Well if she gets too much to take, I’ll just go and work upstairs anyway. I’ve a dissertation to finish.”
“You won’t mind being the only bloke, will you, Dino?” Mad asked Dean a little anxiously. She didn’t want him to move out of the Madhouse. He’d been such a good mate, while she’d been coming to terms with Dan, and she hated the thought of him not being around.
“No, course not… with a load of women to wait on me hand and foot?”
Mad aimed a fist at him and they both laughed.
“When are you coming back after Christmas?” Mad asked him on the evening before they both went home to their families.
Dean shrugged, “Don’t know. Why?”
“Just wondered,” Mad said. “Do you want to do something for New Year?”
“Sure,” Dean replied easily. “Like what?”
Mad gathered Spike up onto her lap, “I don’t know, something. Like, there must be a party somewhere we can crash!”
Dean laughed. “Oh, a party’s no problem, I’ve already been asked to one. Flintlock’s family have got a holiday house in Cornwall, he’s invited a crowd down there for a party, you know. We can go to that if you like.” He kept his voice casual. “What do you think?”
“Brilliant,” said Mad, and then as an afterthought, “What about Pepper?”
“Pepper’s going skiing for New Year, with her family,” said Dean.
Dean’s mum lent them her car and they drove down to Cornwall on
New Year’s Eve, the car loaded with warm clothes and sleeping bags.
When they got there they found that the house, Sea Breeze, was not at all the twee cottage that it sounded, but a large, square, stone house which seemed to grow out of the cliff top. It was reached by a winding stony track across the cliff and had a magnificent view out over the sea.
It was early evening as they drove up and the house looked like a beacon lit up in the gathering darkness. It was already bursting with people, most of whom they knew but a few that they didn’t, and theywere greeted with cries of delight as they carried in the food and drink that they’d brought as their contribution to the party.
“Sea Breeze isn’t the name for this place,” Mad laughed when she looked out of the window across the cliff to the sea. “There’s nothing between here and America!”
“Flintlock says his dad wanted to change the name to Howling Gale,” Dean told her, “but his mum wouldn’t let him. It’s been in her family for years and it’s always been called Sea Breeze.”
Howling Gale would certainly have been more appropriate that night, as a stiff south-westerly, increasing to storm force, swept across the open cliff top and wailed round the house. But nobody cared, nobody heard it as the party far outdid the wind, with the noise of thudding music and shrieks of laughter.
It was a great party, and when midnight came everybody shouted “Happy New Year!” and rushed about kissing everybody else. Dean and Mad went into the kitchen to get some more drink, then armed with full pints looked into the huge, now darkened living room, where the music still blared and people still danced. Dean took Mad’s hand and led her past that door, past the dining room, where the remains of the food everyone had brought was strewn across the table and much of the floor and through another door into a sort of family room. A lamp was on and there were cushions on the floor, tipped from the sofa, but there was no one in there now. The music still blared in the background, but the room seemed very quiet and welcoming.
Dean took Mad’s glass from her hand and put it on a table beside his own and then saying softly, “Happy New Year, Mad,” he pulled her into his arms and began to kiss her. For a moment Mad was shocked and stiff, her brain whirled, she didn’t want this, not with Dino, not with anyone, and then all of a sudden she found she did want it. His arms felt so warm and safe round her, his lips, soft and gentle at first, became increasingly demanding, and the length of his body, pressed hard against hers was strong and firm. Seemingly of their own volition, her arms slipped up round his neck, and her lips, at first closed and cool, opened with warmth to his kiss, as she responded to him in a way she would never have dreamed possible. When at last they broke apart, breathless, she looked into his face wonderingly and said softly, “Dino?”
He still held her in his arms, and he looked down at her with a huge grin. “Yeah?”
“Happy New Year,” she murmured, and they slid down on the cushions so thoughtfully left by someone else, and began to kiss again.
As they lay on the cushions, holding each other close, Mad said, “Dino, what about Pepper?”
“What about Pepper? We had fun, Mad, but she always knew she didn’t stand a chance against you.”
“Against me?” Mad was puzzled. “What do you mean?”
Dean laughed a low throaty laugh. “You really don’t know, do you? Anyone else could have told you.”
“Told me what?”
“Oh Mad,” he said, “I do love you.”
Mad looked up into his face, and all of a sudden realised that it was true, and the colour flooded her cheeks. Dean put his forehead to hers and said quietly, “Mad, my little Maddy, I love you and I want to make love to you, but not here. Not where anyone can walk in. In a private place, a place of our own, somewhere special. OK?” And at a loss for words, she had nodded and kissed him and found herself wanting to cry.
The rest of the New Year party passed in a haze of drinking, and talking and laughing. As the dawn crept into the sky, they fetched their sleeping bags from the car and zipping them together for closeness and warmth, snuggled together in a corner of the family room, surrounded by other collapsed couples and went blissfully to sleep in each other’s arms.
The next morning most of the other partygoers drifted off, leaving the house looking as if a bomb had hit it. Flintlock stood looking at it ruefully, thinking what his parents would say if they could see it and wondering if he’d ever get it back into anything like the condition he’d found it.
“The parents will schiz if they see it like this,” he groaned.
“Aaah, no problem,” Dean said, “we’ll help you get it sorted. Come on Mad.” So the four of them, Flintlock and his girlfriend Sally, and Dean and Madeleine, set to work to restore Sea Breeze to some sort of order. There was much laughter and it took them all day. All the while the howling gale raged outside, bending the cliff top grass horizontal and moaning round the house like a demented ghost.
When at last they’d finished Flintlock said, “Let’s go to the pub for supper, then you guys can spend the night here with us. We’re staying on for a couple of days, you can too if you like.”
So that night, in a room of their own, with the thick curtains drawn against the wind and the rain, Dean and Madeleine, slowly and lingeringly, made love together for the first time. Later as they lay contentedly in each other’s arms, Dean quietly asked the question which had been tormenting him sinc
e their first real kiss, “You weren’t thinking of Dan, were you?”
Mad hoisted herself up on to her elbow and looked down into his face. “Is that what you think?”
“It’s what I’m afraid of,” he admitted.
She put her arms round him and pulled him tightly against her so that her breasts were crushed against him and their cheeks were close. “I don’t think I’ve given him a thought since we left home, and certainly not since you slipped from being my best mate into being my lover.”
“Your lover,” repeated Dean enjoying the words. “That’s what I am. Your lover.” He pulled away from her a little and squinted at her, “I suppose you couldn’t prove that to me again, could you?”
Since their return from Cornwall, they had been inseparable, and Mad wondered how she had ever got through her days without him. Oh, he’d always been about, but the sense of him being with her was an entirely new one.
“The problem is,” she said to him soon after they got back to the Madhouse, “that Dad said no boy and girlfriends could move into the house. So I shan’t tell the parents about us just yet.”
“Well, we didn’t break the rule,” Dean pointed out cheerfully. “We weren’t boy and girl friend when we moved in.”
“No, and there’s nothing they can do about it anyway, but I don’t want to upset them, that’s all.”
“OK,” Dean agreed. “We’ll each have our own room to work in, and we can decide where we sleep… though I must admit that the beds provided by this landlord are not exactly built for two.”
“Oh really?” grinned Mad. “Tried them out, have you?”
“On the odd occasion in the past, maybe more often in the future, who knows?”
“Well, we’re luckier than you know,” Mad told him. “There’s a folding bed underneath mine that springs up to the same height to make a double if required.”
“Oh, I think it’ll be required,” Dean said sliding his hand under her hair and stroking the back of her neck. “Let’s test it out now.”
The New Neighbours Page 43